Proponents of a CERN-like body for AI have called for its creation as a way to build safer AI systems, enable more international coordination in AI development, and reduce dependencies on private industry labs for the development of safe and ethical AI systems. Rather than creating its own AI systems, some argue, a CERN-like institution could focus specifically on research into AI safety. Some advocates, such as computer scientist Gary Marcus, also argue that the CERN model could help advance AI safety research beyond the capacity of any one firm or nation. The new institution could bring together top talent under a mission grounded in principles of scientific openness, adherence to a pluralist view of human values (such as the collective goals of the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development), and responsible innovation. (2024) source Unverified

One successful European model in this area is CERN, which is known globally for its cutting-edge research and world-leading research in the field of particle physics. We need something like this for AI, to bring together a critical mass of experts who can then work together in an outstanding environment to focus on socially and economically important applications. AI industry would then also accumulate around such a large research institution – comparable to Silicon Valley. We need something like this in Europe to make our AI research globally competitive. (2023) source Unverified

First, we need some degree of coordination among the leading development efforts to ensure that the development of superintelligence occurs in a manner that allows us to both maintain safety and help smooth integration of these systems with society. There are many ways this could be implemented; major governments around the world could set up a project that many current efforts become part of, or we could collectively agree (with the backing power of a new organization like the one suggested below) that the rate of growth in AI capability at the frontier is limited to a certain rate per year. And of course, individual companies should be held to an extremely high standard of acting responsibly. Second, we are likely to eventually need something like an IAEA for superintelligence efforts; any effort above a certain capability (or resources like compute) threshold will need to be subject to an international authority that can inspect systems, require audits, test for compliance with safety standards, place restrictions on degrees of deployment and levels of security, etc. Tracking compute and energy usage could go a long way, and give us some hope this idea could actually be implementable. As a first step, companies could voluntarily agree to begin implementing elements of what such an agency might one day require, and as a second, individual countries could implement it. It would be important that such an agency focus on reducing existential risk and not issues that should be left to individual countries, such as defining what an AI should be allowed to say. Third, we need the technical capability to make a superintelligence safe. This is an open research question that we and others are putting a lot of effort into. (2023) source Unverified

I would advocate for a kind of CERN for AGI, and by that, I mean a kind of international research-focused high-end collaboration on the frontiers of AGI development to try and make that as safe as possible. You would also have to pair it with a kind of an institute like IAEA, to monitor unsafe projects. So a kind of like UN umbrella, something that is fit for purpose for that, a technical UN. (2025) source Unverified

I think if you asked those questions you would say, well what society most needs is automated scientific discovery that can help us actually understand the brain to cure neural disorders, to actually understand cancer to cure cancer, and so forth. If that were the thing we were most trying to solve in AI, I think we would say, let’s not leave it all in the hands of these companies. Let’s have an international consortium kind of like we had for CERN, the large hadron collider. That’s seven billion dollars. What if you had $7 billion dollars that was carefully orchestrated towards a common goal. You could imagine society taking that approach. It’s not going to happen right now given the current political climate. (2017) source Unverified

I spent a lot of years hoping that the collaboration would occur, and there are many people in our industry who think that the arrival and development of this new intelligence is so important, it should be done in a multinational way. It should be done in the equivalent of CERN, which is the great physics laboratory, which is global in Switzerland. The political tensions and the stress over values is so great. There’s just no scenario. There’s just — I want to say it again, there’s just no scenario where you can do that. (2024) source Verified